Rep. John Lewis to skip civil rights museum opening due to Trump

President Donald Trump is scheduled to attend the museums' opening, a White House official said Monday, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the trip before a formal announcement. The chair of the state's black legislative caucus, Democratic Rep. Sonya Williams Barnes of Gulfport, is urging people to stay away from Saturday's events. Brice said the protesters are expected to come from all over the state for Saturday's 11 a.m. event to celebrate Mississippi's bicentennial and the opening of the Museum of Mississippi History and Mississippi Civil Rights Museum.

"America can't really turn a corner with regards to its racist and violent past and present until the South, and particularly a state like MS, confronts it - and confronts it unflinchingly", Glaude said.

Numerous seminal moments of the movement - the stories of Emmet Till, of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner, of Medgar Evers, of James Meredith, of Fannie Lou Hamer and the Freedom Riders and Freedom Summer - all happened on MS soil. The Mississippi Civil Rights Museum concentrates on a shorter, but intense span, from 1945 to 1976.

They open Saturday, the day before the 200th anniversary of MS becoming the 20th state. Officials insist the museums are not meant to be "separate-but-equal" in a State where that phrase was cynically invoked to maintain segregated school systems for whites and blacks that were separate and distinctly unequal. The museum, which has been under construction since 2014, features eight galleries that focus on the years 1945 to 1976 "when MS was ground zero for the national Civil Rights Movement", the website says.

Mississippi Congressman Bennie Thompson and former Mississippi Governor Ray Mabus are also not attending the ceremony.

Another person not happy about President Trump's visit is Jackson City Councilman Melvin Priester. Yeah. Is it proper with this President at this particular juncture?

"This is not a place for cheap political tricks".

The message organizer Talamieka Brice said she wants to send to the president is, "Say no to hate". "Trump doesn't care nothing about black folks and poor people in particular", Hampton said.

"President Trump's statements and policies regarding the protection and enforcement of civil rights have been abysmal, and his attendance is an affront to the veterans of the civil rights movement", Derrick Johnson, NAACP president and CEO, said in a statement.